


Love Can Mend a Break

by likehandlingroses



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 12:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13318023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: While Rumple is away under suspicious circumstances, Gideon finds the courage to ask Belle some of the questions he's always wanted answers to. (Takes place during 6x20).





	Love Can Mend a Break

“Do you think he’ll be back soon?” Gideon asked, leaning back from his empty plate. His mother--his real mother who he was eating breakfast with for the first time in his life--shook her head.

“I’d be surprised if he was,” she said, and Gideon could sense the tension returning to the kitchen, the kind he had first noticed that morning between his parents. It hadn’t been there last night...or perhaps he’d been too relieved to have his heart back in his chest and his family around him to notice. But this morning, he’d felt it, as though whatever tied them together was ready to snap. They’d been all smiles, not a cross word between them. Still, there was something strange about the way they moved around each other that made him uneasy. 

However, it had disappeared minutes after his father had gone to pick some things up (no one asked what). 

“I doubt he’ll be back before tonight,” his mother added, sighing. “Since he won’t tell me what it is he’s doing and wants to pretend it’s nothing, I really couldn’t say.” 

Her voice pulled at everything in the room until even the silverware seemed so taut it could break with a single touch. She didn’t mean to; Gideon knew that. Perhaps she didn’t even notice. But his life had taught him little else than to watch for signs of something breaking, for you didn’t want to be caught unprepared when it did. 

Whether she noticed the silverware or not, Gideon couldn’t say, but she did notice him looking uncomfortably at his hands.

“I just mean he’s...well, whatever he’s doing is obviously more important than he’s making it seem. And he knows how I feel about that, and I’m almost certain he knows perfectly well that I know he’s lying...and yet he’s still doing it.”

Gideon regretted whatever he’d done to elicit an explanation, for it only made him feel worse. He’d only just met his parents: what on earth was he to do if they began arguing in earnest again? 

“Maybe he can’t say,” he ventured, feeling his fingers twitch in anticipation. But his mother’s eyes only softened. 

“You’re very sweet,” she said, leaning over and picking up his plate. It wasn’t until her back was turned to him and she was halfway to the sink that she spoke again.

“And maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation. Or maybe it’s something dreadful…”

She turned on the sink and ran the dishes under the water, talking almost to herself. 

“...more than likely, it’s something he could have told me but didn’t because he was worried...but you don’t know until you know with him. And that’s what I’ve tried to explain to him. You can’t keep secrets without trust.”

“So you don’t believe him?” Gideon dared to ask. “That he’s doing what’s best for our family?”

His mother shut off the water, and Gideon could see her spine drawing itself tight as she considered the question. When she spoke, it was with her back still to him. 

“I think that’s what he believes. But he’s good at lying to himself. I’ve seen enough to know that what he says isn’t always what’s true. Even if he wants it to be.”

Gideon didn’t know why he asked the next question, why he risked shattering everything to hear an answer he already knew, but he spoke the words without thinking, throwing them into the room even as he flinched from their impact:

“Is that why you sent me away?”

He prayed she wouldn’t turn around, but she did, eyes wide, her fingers gripping the counter behind her. Already, things were beginning to break, though--to his surprise--Gideon felt more guilty than frightened. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have-”

“No, don’t apologize!” his mother almost shouted, tearing one of her hands away from the counter and placing it between them as though it could stop the words. “Of course you’d wonder.”

She took a breath and looked at her bare feet before beginning to speak, slowly. 

“We were always arguing. We didn’t agree on anything, and that scared me, because some things you have to agree on if you’re going to have a baby. And he wouldn’t listen to me anymore, which made me even more nervous, because if there’s one thing I could always count on it was him listening. Then he just stopped doing it. I think he got tired of disappointing himself, so he just decided to pretend that he didn’t need to get better. So I was afraid, and of course that made him afraid, because he felt like he’d lose you. We were both just circling each other, trying to find a way through without either of us wanting to give anything up.”

She paused for a long while, then, and Gideon could practically see her mind replaying those moments before everything was torn apart, trying to find a way to say it. What happened had happened, and yet she was afraid to speak it into existence. If he thought it would help, Gideon would have told her to stop, that he didn’t need to hear any more. He understood. But he knew she wouldn’t stop, not now. 

“It got to a point where I figured it was better to send you away than to place you in the middle of all of it. And it’s easy to say that he was more in the wrong the whole time, but it doesn’t matter because I’m the one who decided to send you away, and that’s what caused all of this. And I’m sorry for it. I can’t say how much.”

Gideon could hardly stand hearing his mother apologize to him, as though she’d ever done anything but love him. 

“It’s not your fault,” he insisted. “You wanted me to have the best chance I could. And if she hadn’t stolen me, I would have.” 

But his mother only shook her head, though his words did cause a sad sort of smile to cross her face for an instant. 

“All I did was make your life miserable. That doesn’t change just because I wanted something different.” 

“You’ve been the best part of my life,” Gideon said, and he could tell immediately that the words hit home, for he caught a flash of joy in his mother’s eyes. “I knew you loved me, and I knew what you wanted for me. That’s what got me through everything. You didn’t make my life miserable. I don’t know what I’d have done if I didn’t have you. A part of you, anyway.”

She was going to cry, though Gideon suspected that was a good thing. He stood up to embrace her, though she fell into his arms before he’d taken more than a hesitant first step forward. He felt her fingers clutching tight at his back, then one hand reaching up to stroke the hair at the base of his neck. Gideon squeezed his eyes shut; perhaps if he concentrated hard enough, he could impress the memory so deeply that it would seem as though it had always existed. 

“I love you,” she murmured. “So much.”

She gripped him tight for another moment before pulling away just enough to look him in the eye. “And I’m proud of you. You’ve been through so much, and you didn’t let it make you cruel.”

Gideon would have given anything to be able to simply smile and agree with her, to let himself pretend that the life he’d led before coming to Storybrooke had never existed. But he couldn’t. She deserved to know who her son was, and how differently he’d turned out from what she’d wanted him to be. 

“That’s not true,” he said, feeling his fingers grasp his mother’s arms tighter even as he admitted to her the very reason she ought to let him go. “I let her change me, for years. I mean, I never...she didn’t trust me to do anything horrible myself, really. Not until the end, and then I...couldn’t. That’s when she took my heart.”

He swallowed back the wave of nausea that came upon him when he thought of what she’d done to Roderick, how he’d somehow managed to fail everyone who mattered to him at the same time that day. 

“There are people I could have protected long ago, if I’d just tried,” he continued. “But I was too afraid, and I wanted...I wanted to believe she really loved me. Or that she would, if I did what she wanted. But that’s not an excuse.”

His mother looked about as sick as he felt, but she only reached a hand up to his cheek and shook her head. 

“Our choices always matter,” she said. “Even the little ones, or the ones we make after a long list of wrong choices. And you made the right choice. The brave one. That doesn’t change. And I’ll always be proud of you for it.” 

Gideon nodded, though a part of him couldn’t believe what she was saying. 

“I just wish I could have found my way back sooner.”

A momentary flash of pain crossed his mother’s eyes at the words, but she soon recovered, giving his arm one final squeeze before letting him go. 

“You’re here now,” she said. “And you’re safe.”

Gideon waited until her back was safely to him and she was settled back into the dishes before saying: 

“Did you want me to find Father? I could-”

“No,” his mother shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything to you about it, even. It’s not...I’m sure it’s fine. At least as far as you’re concerned.”

“But if you’re worried-”

“I’m not worried, exactly,” she interrupted, turning back toward him. “Just frustrated because there’s things that are still...in progress with us. But we’ve been talking, and things are better,  and all you need to know is that we both love you and want you to be happy.” 

Gideon nodded, but his mother still stared at him, her brow knit. 

“The last thing I want is for you to think you’ve got to pick someone, or that we’re...enemies or he’s evil or anything like that. Because he’s not. He loves you. So much. And I’m so glad he does, and that you know him.”

“Father’s been one of the biggest surprises,” Gideon said. “I didn’t expect that he'd be...like that."

“No?” she whispered, looking pale.

“I don’t mean that I hated him or thought he was evil,” Gideon clarified quickly. “I never did. It’s just that...I had your note, but nothing from him. And The Black Fairy...well, I knew she was his mother. And he was the Dark One. And I’d hoped--mostly because I had to--that he was better than she was, that he was good somehow. But I didn’t expect...I’m not sure what I’m trying to say,” he stumbled, somewhat bewildered at the existence of what he was trying to describe. “I suppose I didn’t expect him to love me so much. Right from the start, whether I deserved it or not.” 

“That’s what parents do,” his mother replied, softly. 

“I’ve never had one before,” Gideon said, finally saying what he’d always known. “I didn’t realize it until I’d met you both.”

The kitchen fell back into silence, though Gideon could sense his mother considering something.

“Before you left, your father actually did give me something for you. A tape...I don’t know if you know what that is?”

Gideon shook his head. 

“It records sound. So you can play something over and over again. And he made one with a poem on it. Like one you’d tell a child before bed. Here, I actually have it...hold on.”

In another minute, she was back with a strange device in hand. She sat back down at the table and pressed a button on the machine. A moment later, Gideon heard his father’s voice coming from it, soft and soothing, reciting the sort of nursery poem that Gideon could almost remember hearing when he’d been very small--though the Black Fairy’s maid had not had the same talent for speaking. Or perhaps it was something else that made his father’s voice carry to Gideon’s soul the way it did. 

He didn’t want to cry, but there was no helping it. Just as there was no helping the fact that he’d lost the chance to fall asleep to his father’s voice as a child, had never gotten to be really held in his mother’s arms. And they’d both missed it all, too. He could see it on their faces, every time he looked at them. How desperately they wanted him to not exist. Not yet, not this way.

“Here...it’s okay…” he heard his mother say, and he felt her hand on his shoulder soon after. She pulled the chair next to him closer and was soon settled in next to him, one hand on his back and another clasping his left hand. 

“I am angry, sometimes,” Gideon admitted. “It wasn’t fair what happened. And it didn’t just happen to me. It happened to all those children, and all those parents. To you.”

“I know,” she whispered, before pressing her forehead to his shoulder. “I know.”

Somehow, that made things better, though nothing had changed. That’s what love did, Gideon was beginning to realize. And perhaps, with time, that love could find a way to heal even the most broken parts of their family. 


End file.
